Word.ws English Dictionary

ups sticks

ups sticks is the third-person singular simple present indicative of up sticks.

Meaning of up sticks

Verb

up sticks (third-person singular simple present ups sticks, present participle upping sticks, simple past and past participle upped sticks)

  1. (Ireland, UK, slang) To put up the mast of a ship in preparation for sailing.
  2. (Ireland, UK, colloquial, figuratively) To prepare to move; to pack up; to go and live in a different place.
    • Both of these conquered more and more of India, till at length the Rajput city of Delhi was captured, and then the disgusted Rajputs ‘upped sticks’ and fled before Islam and the Turk, and finally settled amid the inaccessible mountains and jungles and occasional fertile valleys of what is known as...1934, George Fletcher MacMunn, The Living India: Its Romance and Realities, London: George Bell & Sons, →OCLC, page 17

Questions about ups sticks

What is ups sticks the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Ups sticks is the third-person singular simple present indicative of up sticks.

Words near ups sticks in the dictionary

  1. ups
  2. ups and disappears
  3. ups and downs
  4. ups one's game
  5. ups stick
  6. ups sticks
  7. ups the ante
  8. ups the game
  9. ups to eleven
  10. ups-a-daisy
  11. upsadaisy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ups sticks (page history and authors); up sticks (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ups sticks.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ups_sticks. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.